We love to eat late, but we also realize that this isn’t Spain, where the dinner hour often elides seamlessly into midnight. Here in New York, things work a little differently, and being seated in a restaurant at 10:30 p.m. is generally not much better than not being seated at all– by that hour, the staff are tired, sometimes cranky, and probably counting the minutes until they can head home. It’s hard to blame them. Dedicated diners don’t let that dissuade them though, because at many popular eateries around town, it’s hard to snag a table on the weekend at any other time. Greenwich Village’s Cru is in this category: more than two years after it first opened its doors, it still manages to sell out both of its early seatings regularly, leaving spontaneous diners with the graveyard shift. We’ll be the first to admit to a little wariness about accepting a reservation slot less than an hour before the kitchen was advertised to close, but after finishing an overall excellent meal and exiting Cru at 1:15 a.m., we’re left wondering if anyone at Cru even owns a watch.

Not that time ever seems to have been on the mind of our genial, if often overbearingly chatty, waiter. From the instant we took our seats, he let us know that he was omnicompetent and willing to provide us with information on anything the restaurant had to offer. Because HungryMan and I both like to ask questions, we welcomed his eagerness to discuss the food. However, by the end of the meal, his logorrhea was too much to bear– the evening’s experience had become too much like being waited on by Wikipedia when he presented us with our credit card and remarked, “Ah, Mr. (HungryMan), you share your name with a very fine Australian producer of Shiraz.” We knew that if we engaged him in this conversation, we’d never leave. The upside to all of this was that we rarely needed to ask for clarification on the ingredients in a dish, so we smiled and ate as he talked to prevent our food from going cold.

This proved to be the perfect strategy, carrying us through a triptych of amuse-bouches: (1) crispy, savory herbed arancini (risotto balls), (2) a thin pastry cup of infused mascarpone cheese, and (3) a Lego-sized layered terrine of butternut squash, more creamy cheese, a little squirt of citrus sauce, and a brilliant, sweet sage-streusel topping. Both of us adored the risotto ball and the terrine, but I found the pastry cup too simple and a little too much like eating a spoonful of pure mascarpone. But the portion size for each was ideal: just one or two tiny bites, and the amuse was gone forever, leaving us wanting something more…like a glass of wine.

If there is one thing Cru does have, it is wine. Since 2004, the restaurant is rumored to have expanded its legacy cellar (via Cru’s owner, Roy Welland) from 65,000 to nearly 90,000 bottles, giving it one of two of the largest wine cellars in the nation. (The other? Bern’s Restaurant in Tampa, Florida). Choosing a bottle at Cru entails poring over two leather-bound volumes, each as big as something out of Harry Potter. Prices range from the high $20’s up to tens of thousands of dollars per bottle. It’s hard to estimate an accurate median price, but it is enough to say that there are plenty of options for reds, whites, and rosés in the $40-80 range. HungryMan and I opted to exploit the cellar’s substantial catalog of back vintages and ordered a 1989 Saint Joseph red for $72. Pricing older vintages is tricky, but considering this was a wine from one of this century’s greatest Rhone vintages, we figured the price was just about right. And while the wine took a good 30 minutes post-decanting to open up, it was dense and remarkably fruity. Sadly, our sommelier was, in all fairness, not much help. We asked him a few questions about differences between the 1990 and 1989 vintages of the Saint Joseph, but he seemed more interested in popping Cristal for a neighboring table. For us, this was not a dire situation–we’ve both taught wine courses–but we wonder if other diners might not get a bit overwhelmed by the two-fisted list when it doesn’t come with a little more friendly guidance. If I could, I’d subtract 20% of our waiter’s enthusiasm and graft it onto the sommelier to produce a perfect service combination.

Our dinner choices were a bit easier to make. Both HungryMan and I chose from the three course prix fixe ($74 per person) menu, politely turning down the $399 white truffle menu (featuring white truffles in every one of seven courses, including dessert), and I don’t regret the choice. My appetizer, the saffron tagliolini with cioppino sauce (pictured above) and flat-leaf parsley was phenomenally good, not to mention a fantastic match for the still-tannic red wine we ordered. Moreover, I was really pleased to see that the portion size was not minute– this dish would have been a large appetizer in any restaurant, and it was made even more filling by the quarter-sized chunks of fresh Dungeness crab trapped in the mound of aromatic, al dente pasta. The star dish of the evening though was HungryMan’s Rock Shrimp Salad (also pictured above), served on a crunchy bed of grated celeriac and a polenta cake that was redolent of fresh green onions. The small spoonful of horseradish cream atop the stacked dish was what truly made this appetizer into something special– the high-note flavors from the horseradish brought out the mellower essences of the shrimp and the celery root, turning this into quite possibly the best appetizer of our culinary year to date.

HungryMan’s main dish, the roasted duck breast with baby beets and root vegetable purée was also first-rate. The duck was very rare, yet still crisp on the outside, and the port-drizzled beets were as sweet as toffee. The grouper saltimbocca I ordered was, unfortunately, not as good. I loved the long, noodle-like strips of tender broccoli, but the fish itself was cooked very strangely– half of it was moist and just a bit overdone, while the other half was rubbery and as tough as a door-stopper. We try not to send food back when we’re writing about it, but I’ll admit that I was tempted. Had it been a little earlier in the evening, I might have done just that. But after looking over the autumn menu on Cru’s website, I think I may know why this one dish seemed so uncharacteristically inadequate: it appears that the restaurant’s original plan for this seafood dish incorporated sturgeon, rather than grouper. I’m always in favor of using whatever is freshest–especially from the fishmarket–but substituting a less fatty fish (such as grouper) as a stand-in for sturgeon requires that some big changes to the recipe be made. The biggest disappointment to me was that the lingonberry sauce and the bed of vegetables were both terrific–I can only imagine what the whole dish would have been, had the grouper been a sturgeon.

For our final course, HungryMan and I split our options and shared both dishes, one of us ordering the cheese plate and the other the gianduja terrine. This was partly by design–we both love cheese courses and dessert–and partly by necessity, as we still had 1/3 of a bottle of our slow-blooming wine to finish. Our server was very generous about giving us time to finish the bottle and brought the cheese course immediately. Both of us enjoyed the presentation of each small slice of cheese with its own individual accompaniment and were especially taken with the Québecois Oka, served with a white fig compote. Our gianduja dessert was also superb, particularly the tiny banana doughnut and the bittersweet chocolate sorbet components. I also loved the crunchy base of the terrine itself; I imagine that this is what Thor’s pastry chef was trying to achieve with the deconstructed Snickers bar we ate there this February.

What is all the more amazing is that both the cheese plate and the dessert were as flawlessly presented as they were, considering that they both emerged from the kitchen long past midnight. While we did indeed get to watch most of the kitchen and dining room staff head home in their street clothes as we finished our meal, nobody shot us a dirty look or even hinted that we should hurry. Maybe the real test for a high-end restaurant should be in how it handles its final evening seating. And considering that we were every bit as comfortable in the dining room at 1:00 a.m. as we were two and-a-half hours earlier, Cru has set the score to beat.

Cru, 24 Fifth Avenue, 212-529-1700.